The Hindu Business Line : The progress card of education

India has done quite well in the past 60 years but not well enough. It will do better when teachers learn to accept change, administrators learn to respect teachers and politicians learn to respect freedom. Above all, minimising economic disparity is the best way of ensuring quality education, says P. V. INDIRESAN.

Over the next 20-30 years, India will have larger numbers of youth graduating than any other country.

A philosopher once said education is what remains after one has forgotten what had been taught. A wag put it differently: Education is the process of transferring information from the textbook of the teacher to the notebook of the students without passing through the brains of either. India can show plenty of examples of either type. Indian education is like the girl in the poem who, when she was good, was very, very good but when she was bad she was horrid.

Admirable progress

Admittedly, Indian education has made admirable progress in the first 60 years of Independence. Literacy rates have shot up from barely 18 per cent at the dawn of Independence to over 65 per cent currently. Sixty years ago, one could count the number of engineering colleges on the tips of one’s fingers; now there are nearly two thousand of them. Standards too have gone up significantly. Present day students who compete in various entrance examinations demonstrate levels of competence unknown 50-60 years ago. Caste differences have narrowed; upper castes no longer dominate education the way they used to do.

Indian education has won laurels worldwide. The US Congress went so far as to pass a special resolution commending the contributions made by IIT graduates to the growth of the US economy. Not merely in the US, in the unlikeliest countries of the world, Outer Mongolia and Mozambique for instance, Indian engineers, nurses and doctors have been welcomed and acknowledged for their ability.

Dismal side too

Unfortunately, there is a dismal side also to the picture. According to the Eleventh Plan Approach Paper: “Thirty-eight per cent of the children who have completed four years of schooling cannot read a small paragraph with short sentences meant to be read by a student of Class II. About 55 per cent of such children cannot divide a three digit number by a one digit number. . . .we should also note that just 28 per cent of our schools had electricity in 2005 and only about half had more than two teachers or two classrooms. Only 40 per cent of primary school teachers were graduates and 30 per cent had not even completed Higher Secondary.

For a large proportion of our children, school is therefore an ill-lit classroom with more than one class being taught together by someone who may not have completed her own schooling.”

In other words, on an average, Indian education has improved substantially in quantity and quality but disparity too has increased to alarming levels.

Inverted-U curve

If one were to draw a graph of education quality against years of education, it will be an inverted-U curve with the peak attained around 10-12 standard levels; average quality by international standards deteriorates at both ends of primary education and postgraduate studies. If a graph were to be drawn against economic class, that too will be an inverted-U with the peak at the middle class: the poor do not have the stamina for the benefits of education to show up; for the rich, academic ability is of no consequence.

India’s rich spend an estimated $5 billion a year in educating their children abroad more as a social one-upmanship rather than for academic enlightenment. Therefore, the best performers are from the middle class around the 10th-12th standard level.

A former Member of the Planning Commission asked me: We send you the brightest and the finest children, why do you university teachers turn them into incompetent goondas? Undoubtedly, he was exaggerating, but he had a point.

Two reasons are prominent why Indian education has turned out as bad as it is: Increased political interference and scant respect for teachers.

No aspect of education management is now free from political interference — student admissions, teacher selections, as well as academic programmes are vitiated by political meddling and corruption.

Even IITs are reeling under the weight of political oppression. Over centralisation of authority in organs such as the UGC, the AICTE and “professional” universities has led to mindless standardisation and lowering standards of evaluation.

Over the next 20-30 years, India will have larger numbers of youth graduating than any other country. India can be the supplier of human capital for the whole world. South America had that opportunity for “demographic dividend” 20 years ago; it squandered that benefit by promoting increasing economic disparity. There is every possibility we will repeat that mistake. India should also compete vigorously against China which is expanding the teaching of English with its usual frenetic zeal. Whatever vociferous “experts” may say, that is best done from Class I — the way the middle class is doing.

Primary focus

At the primary school level, current policy insists that there must be a school within a kilometre of every hamlet. That has resulted in a large number of single- or two-teacher schools. Quality will improve significantly if schools are clubbed together, with one large well-equipped school with 15-20 teachers for every ten hamlets or so. The schools that surrender their school may be pacified by donating them a bus and motorable road with specific support for transporting children.

Except for Central schools and Navodaya schools, most government schools are performing poorly. Privatisation is a fashionable solution but competition is the true remedy. Bussing again will give an opportunity for a child to select among several schools and force each and every school to perform better.

At the other end, the time has come to close down both the UGC and the AICTE. Progressive countries do not centralise; they realise it is autonomy that makes universities great. University entrance examinations confer undue advantage on rich children who alone can afford expensive coaching institutions.

They have their use in moderating varying standards among school boards, but they are effective only for shortlisting and not for final selection because school performance too is critical. The reputation of the school is no less important because the residue that is left after “what has been taught is forgotten” is high in their case.

India has done quite well in the past sixty years but not well enough. It will do better when teachers learn to accept change, administrators learn to respect teachers and politicians learn to respect freedom. Above all, minimising economic disparity is the best way of ensuring quality education.

(The author is a former Director, IIT Madras.)